Power Cut - #JustWriteIt Wattys2015

Five

After around an hour and a half of walking, the source of the light came into focus. Deep in one of the valleys, a lake had worn away at the cliff face next to it, creating a small cavern that could be used as shelter. And inside this cavern was a most peculiar sight. 

It was a house, an old, decrepit wooden house, which looked like it could fall into the lake it was built on at any second. It creaked and shuddered in the wind and as the cave walls bounced back the eerie noises, it was almost as if the house had a voice. A rotting wooden boardwalk stretched its way across the lake, with large gaps between the planks that looked as if they were just waiting to swallow you up. The breeze sent ripples across the lake's reflective surface and sent the mist curling up around the fragile foundations of the boardwalk, like tiny white hands, threatening to pull the boardwalk to pieces. A few kerosene lamps were hanging on poles, leading the way across the boardwalk, and as they swung in the wind the light flashed and flickered through the cave entrance, sending the signal that lead us here.

Jayden took a look at the boardwalk and determined which boards were rotten, and the best route across. After dancing his way across he told the rest of us how to do the same, and before long we were all standing on the old wooden balcony, the smell of mould and decomposing wood invading our senses. Jayden managed to turn the door handle but the wooden door had warped and gotten jammed. We all threw our weight against it with him holding down the handle and after the second attempt, the door slammed open. Dust and cobwebs rained down on us and after much coughing and dusting ourselves off we turned on our torches and looked at each other. An unnatural silence enveloped us all.

Jayden was the first to break the silence, "See if you can find a light switch anywhere, I saw some electrical cables leading to the house on the way in."

We all started to look around, and after a few minutes I heard Brandon dramatically clear his throat and exclaimed in a stupid voice, "Let their be LIGHT!". He flipped a large switch and the small fluorescent light bulbs scattered around slowly came to life. You could tell that they were old, as they let out a loud buzzing noise that you could hear when you got close to them.

"I say we should split up, what do you guys think?" Jayden asked. "There are five of us after all."

"Yeah okay, good idea." Harrison agreed.

As the two of them made plans, I saw Brandon sneaking up behind Amelia, turning his hand into a spider and imitating crawling it up her back. He motioned for me to play along, and I did, just this once.

"Hey Amelia, there's something on your back." I lied.

At that same time, Brandon ran his fingers along her spine, causing her to let out a shrill, ear splitting scream. She then whacked Brandon across the back of the head, with a satisfying thwack!

"I agree with you two Jayden, we should definitely split up, away from this idiot." She said, although you could tell she was still joking. Nevertheless, she walked up to Jayden and stood by him.

"Fine then, Amelia can come with me. Harrison, will you stick with the other two?" he glanced towards Amelia, then looked back to Harrison.

"I think that Brandon needs to have at least two people supervising him at all times, don't you agree Harrison?" I answered.

"Yeah I do, we'll go this way." Harrison replied.

"Okay, if you find something or need any help just call out okay?" he and Amelia linked arms and turned to start walking up a flight of stairs, with Brandon pulling lovey-dovey faces behind their backs. He was convinced that something was going on between the two of them and to tell the truth, I wouldn't be surprised if he was right. Brandon and I exchanged a knowing look, and then we realized that Harrison had already wandered off.